Every speech that is made beside the graves of these Unknown Soldiers who lie now in the comradeship of youthful death, every speech which exalts patriotism above peace, which hints at reparations and revenges, which cries for mean alliances to sustain the traditions of the conflict, which exalts national security over the common welfare, which wags the “glorious flag” of this nation or that in the face of the universal courage and tragedy of mankind, is an insult and an outrage upon the dead youth who lies below. He sought justice and law in the world as he conceived these things, and whoever approaches his resting place unprepared to serve the establishment of a world law and world justice, breathing the vulgar cants and catchwords of a patriotism outworn and of conflicts that he died to end, commits a monstrous sacrilege and sins against all mankind. V THE PRESIDENT AT ARLINGTON Washington, Nov. 11. I am writing this just after my return from the funeral, in the National Cemetery, of the American Unknown Soldier at Arlington, a very stately and moving ceremony, under the bright blue sky and the cold, keen air of a Virginia November day. The body had been lying in state at the Capitol and it was carried through Washington to the cemetery at the head of a great procession in which the Supreme Court, the Cabinet, Senators, members of the House of Representatives, war veterans and a multitude of societies marched on foot, a march of nearly two hours and a half duration. Much of this gathering was of the substance of all such processions, but one or two of the contingents were rich with association and suggestion. There were fifty or sixty, I should guess, very old men, bent, white-headed—one with a conspicuous long, white beard—veterans of a civil war that was fought out to an end before I was born. They came close to a contingent of men who had been specially decorated in the great war, erect and eager, still on the better side of the prime of life. These older men had fought in a great fight against a division, a separation that today, thanks to their sacrifice, has become inconceivable. They had fought to seal the Federal Union of what were else warring States. The young men who marched before them had fought in a war upon the greater stage of the whole world. Some day the tale of those abundant heroes will have shrunken to the dimensions of that little band of pathetic and glorious old men. Will they live to as complete an assurance that their cause also has been won forever, the newer veterans of the greater union that has yet to come?